Tom Wilkinson Thinks HE Should Be the Next Riddler in 'Dark Knight Rises!'

Riddle us this: Which character went mad after being gassed at the end of ‘Batman Begins’ … but didn’t die?

Tom Wilkinson has — we think, at least — an incredible bit of casting advice for Christopher Nolan as he prepares to shoot The Dark Knight Rises. And it involves the biggest human question mark of all: The Riddler.

“I thought I’d be a great guy [to play the Riddler],” the twice-Oscar-nominated Wilkinson told us April 11 at the New York premiere of The Conspirator, hosted by Piaget and the Wall Street Journal. “My character was sent mad, but you never saw him die. I thought it would be great if my kind of crazy and had been sent [away], but somehow recovered — but nevertheless was totally insane.”

For those of you who don’t remember 2005’s Batman Begins, Tom’s characterCarmine Falcone got gassed by the evil Dr. Jonathan Crane, and ends up a quivering, insane mess of a human being.

It’s so brilliant we can barely get our heads around it, Mr. Wilkinson. And anyone who saw him play a lawyer gone mad in Michael Clayton knows he knows his crazy. So far, however, there hasn’t been any indication that the Riddler will actually be a character inthe third Batman installment.

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Very bad idea. Tom may be a good actor for conventional type roles, but I found him terribly miscast in Batman Begins. He didn’t seem convincing as a mobster at all. More like a grumpy mid-level manager at your local Kinko’s. His acting when the Scarecrow hits him with the gas was particularly bad. Looked like he was ACTING.